Texans Build World’s Most Powerful Laser

Scientists have switched on the world’s most powerful laser, which for one-trillionth of a second is 2,000 times more powerful than all the power plants in the United States. The laser’s output tops a petawatt, which is a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) watts of power.

In the basement of the physics building at the University of Texas at Austin, the school’s High Intensity Laser Science Group built a petawatt laser in hopes of recreating astronomical phenomena like supernovae in miniature.

First, the newly elongated seed pulse is juiced by entirely different lasers using special crystals in a process called optical parametric amplification. This takes the power of the laser all the way to one joule. Then, it hits the rod amplifier, which is a 24-centimeter-long piece of glass that gets pumped with lights that the laser pulse can absorb. Finally, that pulse is fed through a disk amplifier, which can be seen below. Inside this amplifier, two disks of glass are juiced with pump lights that, after four passthroughs, bring the laser up to about 250 joules of energy.

The actual laser pulse will come out of the round hatch seen at the left of the chamber, where it will be directed at a target to mimic a nuclear explosion or an exotic dense star.

The work is sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration and totaled about $7 million in equipment costs.